Guide to Grammar and Style — P

There's no
hard-and-fast rule for the length of a paragraph: it can be as
short as a sentence or as long as it has to be. Just remember
that each paragraph should contain only one developed idea. A
paragraph often begins with a topic sentence which sets
the tone of the paragraph; the rest amplifies, clarifies, or
explores the topic sentence. When you change topics, start a new
paragraph.

Be sure your paragraphs are organized to help your argument
along. Each paragraph should build on what came before, and
should lay the ground for whatever comes next. Mastering transitions can make a very big
difference in your writing.

A matter of mechanics and house style: it's customary (at least in
America) to indicate new paragraphs in most prose by indenting
the first line (three to five spaces), with no skipped lines
between paragraphs. Business memos and press releases tend to
skip a line and not indent. (As you can see from this guide,
most Web browsers use the skip-a-line-and-don't-indent style.) In
papers for English classes, don't-skip-but-indent is preferable.
[Entry revised 14 July 2000]

Use this nasty
vogue word, and I'll forgive you only if you're a mathematician,
a scientist, or a computer programmer. (Even then, I'll probably
forgive you only grudgingly.) The rest of the world can safely do
without. [Entry added 14 August 1999]

Don't bury
important ideas in parentheses. Dan
White's example points out the danger of using parentheses
for important thoughts:

The American and French Revolutions (which provided the
inspiration for Blake's prophetic poetry) were very important to
English writers of the 1780s and '90s.

Here the substantial part of the sentence is buried in a
parenthesis, while the weaker part (note the word “important”) is in the main clause.
See also Emphasis.

Note that sentence-ending periods should go outside
the parentheses if the parenthetical remark is part of a larger
sentence, but inside the parentheses if it's not
embedded in a larger sentence. This is an example of the first
(notice the punctuation goes outside, because we're still part of
that outer sentence). (This is an example of the second, because
we're no longer inside any other sentence; the parenthesis is its
own sentence.)

Interjections, which are words that don't fit into any
of the categories: hey, ouch, yo,
cheers, damn.

All of that's worth knowing, but it's not worth taking the
number eight too seriously. A few lessons about this messy
language we speak.

First, although dictionaries usually tell you the part of
speech for each word, it's not always that simple. In many
languages, parts of speech are clearly marked in the form of each
word: Latin umbra, for instance, can be only a noun
(“shade”). If you want the verb, it's umbro;
if you want an adjective, it's umbrosus. In English,
though, we don't clearly signal parts of speech in our word
forms, and words have a habit of being used in various ways:
think of in the shade (shade as a noun), a
shade tree (as an adjective), and shade your eyes
(as a verb). Nouns can function as adjectives:
department, for example, is a noun; but put it in front
of another noun — department store — and now
it functions as an adjective, modifying the word store.
(The two-word noun phrase department store can in turn
become an adjective if we put it in front of another noun —
“I don't want to pay department store
prices” — and the three-word noun phrase can in
turn become another adjective, and so on, for as long as your
ingenuity holds up.) Adjectives can also function as nouns in a
sentence: “Sleep is for the weak.” Here
weak — which we usually think of as an adjective
— is operating “absolutely,” and it's playing
the role of a noun. Take the adjective dark and stick it
in front of an adjective like green, and now it's acting
as an adverb.

Rather than thinking of parts of speech as properties of
specific words, then, it's better to think of them as
functions within a sentence. These functions can be
played by single words or groups of words.

Second, English is a very flexible language — it always
has been; this isn't some horrible modern development — and
words have a habit of changing their parts of speech over time.
Some are now perfectly acceptable: although move began
its life as a verb (with the associated nouns movement
and motion), no one objects to its use as a noun today
(“She showed me some impressive moves”; “He took his opponent's
rook on his fourth move”; “This is our third move this year”).
Block went the other way, from a noun to a verb. Other
words are still more or less controversial. Like (as in “this is like that,”
not “cats like tuna”) is traditionally a preposition, though it's
increasingly being used as a conjunction, and most likely that
will someday be the norm; to transition, though common
in businessese, makes some people woozy (it was first used in
1975). And some of these changing parts of speech are clearly neologisms or nonce words; while
they probably won't become part of Standard English, they don't present
any serious trouble: “We had to bookcase-over the hole
in the wall so the landlord wouldn't see it.” That one is
unlikely to catch on, but some do. You might not like it —
as Bill Watterson put it in Calvin and Hobbes,
“Verbing weirds language” — and many of them are ugly, but that's the way the language
works.

Finally, don't get too hung-up on exactly which part of speech
a word is playing — and don't approach the “eight
parts of speech” with fundamentalist rigor. We use these
terms to describe the language; to force the language into the
categories is to put the cart before the &c. A good, modern,
technical grammar will give you some more insight into how the
language really works. [Entry added 21 Dec. 2004; revised
19 Aug. 2006.]

The active
voice takes the form of “A
does B”; the passive takes the form of “B
is done [by A].”

Writers are often instructed to avoid the passive voice, and
there are two reasons for this advice. The first is that
sentences often become dense and clumsy when they're filled with
passive constructions. The more serious danger of the passive
voice, though, is that it lets the writer shirk the
responsibility of providing a subject for the verb. Dan White
gives an example:

“I'm sorry that the paper was poorly written.” If
you're going to apologize, apologize: “I'm sorry I wrote a
bad paper.” The active voice forces one to be specific and
confident, not wimpy.

And the stakes can be higher when you're talking about
atrocities worse than bad papers. This is why nefarious
government and corporate spokesmen are so fond of the passive
voice: think of the notorious all-purpose excuse, “Mistakes
were made.” Then think about how much weaseling is going on
in a sentence like “It has been found regrettable that the
villagers' lives were terminated” — notice especially
how the agency has disappeared altogether. It should make you
shudder.

In your own writing, therefore, it's wise to favor the active
voice whenever you can. Instead of the passive “The point
will be made,” try the active “I will
make the point” — notice the agent
(“I”) is still there.

Don't go overboard, though. Some passives are necessary and
useful. In scientific writing, for instance, sentences are
routinely written in the passive voice; the authors are therefore
given less importance, and the facts are made to speak for
themselves. Even in non-scientific writing, not all passives can
be avoided.

Don't confuse am, is, are, to
be, and such with the passive voice, and don't confuse action verbs with the
active voice. The real question is whether the subject
of the sentence is doing anything, or having something
done to it. I have been carrying is active,
while I have been carried is passive.

There's an admirably thorough and precise discussion of the
English passive in the Language
Log blog — worth checking out if you want a better
understanding.

This isn't a
comprehensive guide to period usage; that would take more time
and energy than I can spare. Besides, you already know most of
the rules: a period ends a declarative sentence, and sometimes is
used in abbreviations. Still, a few things aren't obvious.

For instance: when do you use periods in acronyms or other abbreviations? Alas,
there's no reliable rule: some get periods, some don't, and only
a dictionary will tell you for
sure which they are. (Even the dictionaries are only reporting on
their sense of the prevailing usage; no one standard is
“right,” and dictionaries will differ from one
another). A few rough guidelines, though, might help. Academic
degrees usually get periods (Ph.D., D.Ed.), as do awards and
other distinctions (F.R.S. for Fellow of the Royal Society,
D.S.C. for Distinguished Service Cross). Abbreviations usually
presented in lowercase (e.g., i.e., a.m., etc.) usually get
periods. Acronyms — abbreviations that form pronounceable
words (NASA, AIDS, NIMBY) — usually go without.

But these are only rough guidelines, not hard-and-fast rules.
Different house styles treat words in
different ways; they leave a lot uncovered altogether; and they
don't address those wacky abbreviations that take other forms
(like A/C for air conditioning). Hie thee to the dictionary and,
if you're writing for publication, don't be surprised if your
editor overrules you.

More important: what if one of those abbreviations with a
period appears at the end of a sentence? — do you use
another period to end the sentence, or is one enough?

This one is simple enough: never double up periods. If a
statement ends with “etc.” the period in the
abbreviation does double duty, serving as the full stop to end
the sentence. If, however, you need another mark of punctuation
after an abbreviation, you can put it after the period. So:

This was her first trip to the U.S. (The period does
double-duty, ending both the abbreviation and the sentence.)

Is this your first trip to the U.S.? (The period ends the
abbreviation, but the question mark ends the sentence.)

On her first trip to the U.S., Kristina lost her passport.
(The period ends the abbreviation, but the sentence keeps going
after the comma.)

A tricky one. The
traditional meaning of peruse is (in the words of the
OED) “To examine in detail; to scrutinize, inspect,
survey, oversee; to consider, to take heed of,” or (in the words
of the American Heritage Dictionary) “To read or
examine, typically with great care.” The per- prefix
here means “thoroughly, completely, to completion, to the end.”
But peruse is increasingly being used to mean “to look
over briefly or superficially; to browse” (OED) or
“to glance over, skim” (AHD).

Most prescriptive guides will tell
you the “skim” meaning is simply wrong: Bryan Garner
writes (in A Dictionary of Modern American Usage)
that “Some writers misuse the word as if it meant ‘to
read quickly’ or ‘scan,’” and two out of
three members of the American Heritage Usage Panel
find this meaning unacceptable. On the other hand, my guess is
that only a tiny fraction of the reading public knows the
“real” meaning, so you can't count on them to
understand you if you use it. Advise people to peruse a memo, and
they'll probably think it means “glance at it.” Your
best bet, then, is probably to avoid the word, unless you're
certain your readers will get your meaning. [Entry added
14 May 2006.]

Plural
means “more than one.” English handles these things more simply
than many languages. You already know the basic rules: most nouns take an s or es at
the end; singular nouns ending in y usually end in
ies in the plural. Our adjectives don't change form at all.
There are a handful of irregular nouns — child,
children; woman, women — but native speakers
learn the important ones early, and non-native speakers can find
a list of them easily enough.

A few exceptions require special care. In some noun phrases,
the “head noun” gets the plural, even if it's not at the end of
the noun phrase: mothers in law, attorneys
general, courts martial. (Such forms may be
disappearing, but they're still preferred.)

Many people get spooked by the plurals of proper names: the
rules really aren't that different. Papa Smith, Mama Smith, and
Baby Smith are the Smiths; Mr. Birch, Mrs. Birch, and Junior
Birch are the Birches. The only difference is that proper names
ending in y shouldn't change form in the plural: just
add an s. The members of the Percy family are the
Percys, not the Percies.

Resist the urge to put an apostrophe before the s in
a plural, whether in common or proper nouns. The term for this
vulgar error is the “greengrocer's apostrophe,” from the
shopkeepers' habit of advertising their “potato's” and “apple's.”
The only occasions on which you use apostrophes to make plurals
are spelled out in my entry for apostrophes. [Entry added 14
Sept. 2004.]

The
possessive is used to indicate belonging:
Carol's car (“the car that belongs to Carol”), my
brother's apartment (“the apartment that belongs to my
brother”), my neighbors' yard (“the yard that belongs to
my neighbors”), his name (“the name that belongs to
him”), and so on. You could also express most of them with
of: “the car of Carol,” “the apartment of my brother,”
“the yard of my neighbors,” “the name of him.”

The rules for forming possessives are simple:

The personal pronouns have their own
possessive forms: my (“belonging to me”), your
(“belonging to you”), his (“belonging to him”),
her (“belonging to her”), our (“belonging to
us”), and their (“belonging to them”).

With most singular nouns, you form the possessive with an apostrophe and s:
Carol's, brother's.

With plural nouns ending in s, just add an
apostrophe: neighbors'. Personal names don't get treated
any differently: Bush's agenda (“the agenda that belongs
to Bush”), the Smiths' house (“the house that belongs to
the Smiths”).

Plural nouns that don't end in s are treated like
singular nouns, with apostrophe and s: the people's
choice, the children's toys, and so on.

The only time for hesitation is when you have a singular noun
that ends in s or an s sound: bus,
James, house. This is a matter of house style: most guides suggest the same
rules as before: the bus's route, James's
friends, my house's roof. Others (especially in
journalism) suggest just an apostrophe without the additional
s. Some have different rules depending on whether the
s is sounded like an s or a z; some
have different rules based on whether it's a word of one syllable
or more. But it's usually best to go with apostrophe-s
with all singular nouns, whether or not they end in s.
[Entry added 12 July 2005; revised 24 December
2006.]

The guiding
principle in all your word choices should be precision, the most
important contributor to clarity.

Sometimes this means choosing words a little out of the
ordinary: peripatetic might come closer to the mark than
wandering, and recondite is sometimes more
accurate than obscure. But while a large vocabulary will help you here, don't
resort to long words or obfuscation. More often precision
means choosing the right familiar word: paying attention to
easily confused pairs like imply and infer, and
making sure the words you choose have exactly the right meaning.
For instance, “Hamlet's situation is extremely important in the
play” means almost nothing. Try something that expresses a
particular idea, like “Hamlet's indecision forces the
catastrophe” or “The murder of Hamlet's father brings about the
crisis.”

Precision can also mean putting your words in just the right
order, or using just the right grammatical construction to make
your point. Always read your writing as closely as possible,
paying attention to every word, and ask yourself whether every
word says exactly what you mean.

A declarative
sentence (or independent clause)
is made up of two bits, the subject and the
predicate. The subject — usually containing one or
more nouns or pronouns, along with their accompanying
modifiers — is who or what
does the action of the sentence. The predicate is what's said
about the subject: it consists of the main verb, along with all its modifiers and objects.

(That simplifies things quite a bit. The subject doesn't have
to be a noun or a pronoun; it can be a that clause, for
instance: “That William Shakespeare wrote the plays attributed to
him is beyond doubt.” The subject isn't “William Shakespeare,”
but the whole that clause. And some sentences have only
“dummy” noun phrases, like “It's raining,” where the it
means nothing.)

Why should you care? In some style guides, some compound
modifiers — especially when adverbs that don't end in
-ly modify adjectives — are hyphenated when they appear in the
“attributive” position, but not in the “predicate” position. In
other words, there's no hyphen if the adjective phrase is what is
being predicated. That usually means they should be
hyphenated when they come before the noun they modify, but not
after, although that's not always the case. For example:

Shakespeare's least-read play is probably Two
Gentlemen of Verona. (The phrase is hyphenated because it's
attributive.)

Of all of Shakespeare's plays, Two Gentlemen of
Verona is probably the least read. (No hyphen
because it's in the predicate position.)

He gives a series of well-chosen examples.
(Attributive, and therefore hyphenated.)

His examples are always well chosen. (No hyphen.)

It's a subtle distinction, and not one to get too worked up
about. Some style guides are backing away from this rule,
preferring to give the general advice that such phrases should be
hyphenated whenever they aid clarity. [Entry added 18 Jan.
2005.]

A quick-and-dirty rule of thumb: you can usually recognize a
preposition by putting it before the word he. If your
ear tells you he should be him, the word might
be a preposition. Thus to plus he becomes
to him, so to is a preposition. (This doesn't
help with verbs of action; show + he becomes
show him. Still, it might help in some doubtful
cases.)

Along with split infinitives, a
favorite bugbear of the
traditionalists. Whatever the merit of the rule — and both historically and
logically, there's not much — there's a substantial body of
opinion against end-of-sentence prepositions; if you want to keep the crusty old-timers happy, try
to avoid ending written sentences (and clauses) with
prepositions, such as to, with, from,
at, and in. Instead of writing “The topics we
want to write on,” where the preposition on ends the
clause, consider “The topics on which we want to write.”
Prepositions should usually go before (pre-position) the
words they modify.

On the other hand — and it's a big other hand —
old-timers shouldn't always dictate your writing, and you don't
deserve your writing license if you elevate this rough guideline
into a superstition. Don't let it make your writing clumsy or
obscure; if a sentence is more graceful with a final preposition, let it
stand. For instance, “He gave the public what it longed for” is
clear and idiomatic, even though it ends with a preposition; “He
gave the public that for which it longed” avoids the problem but
doesn't look like English. A sentence becomes unnecessarily
obscure when it's filled with from whoms and with
whiches. According to a widely circulated (and often
mutated) story, Winston Churchill, reprimanded for ending a
sentence with a preposition, put it best: “This is the sort of
thing up with which I will not put.” [Revised 12 Jan.
2007.]

The grammar books you're
used to are what linguists call prescriptive: that is,
they prescriberules for
proper usage. For several hundred years, “grammar” was synonymous
with “prescriptive grammar.” You went to a book to get the
definitive ruling: thou shalt not split
infinitives, thou shalt not end sentences
with prepositions. (This is presumably why you're reading
this guide now: to find out what's “right” and what's
“wrong.”)

Linguists today are justly suspicious about such things, and
most spend their time on descriptive grammars:
descriptions of how people really speak and write,
instead of rules on how they should. They're doing
important work, not least by arguing that no language or dialect
is inherently better than any other. They've done a
signal service in reminding us that Black English is as
“legitimate” a dialect as the Queen's English, and that speaking
the way Jane Austen writes doesn't make you more righteous than
someone who uses y'all. They've also demonstrated that
many self-styled “grammar” experts know next to nothing about grammar as it's studied by
professionals, and many aren't much better informed about the
history of the language. Many prescriptive guides are grievously
ill informed.

Fair enough. Sometimes, though, I enjoy picking fights with
those linguists, usually amateur, who try to crowd prescription
out of the market altogether. The dumber ones make a leap from
“No language is inherently better than another” (with which I
agree) to “Everything's up for grabs” (with which I don't). The
worst are hypocrites who, after attacking the very idea of rules,
go on to prescribe their own, usually the opposite of whatever
the traditionalists say. These folks have allowed statistics to
take the place of judgment, relying on the principle, “Whatever
most people say is the best.”

These dullards forget that words are used in social
situations, and that even if something isn't inherently
good or evil, it might still have a good or bad effect on your
audience. I happen to know for a fact that God doesn't care
whether you split infinitives. But some people do, and that's a
simple fact that no statistical table will change. A good
descriptivist should tell you that. In fact, my beef with many
descriptivists is that they don't describe enough. A
really thorough description of a word or usage would take into
account not only how many people use it, but in what
circumstances and to what effect.

Much can be said against old-fashioned bugbears like end-of-sentence
prepositions and singular
they. They're not particularly logical, they don't
have much historical justification, and they're difficult even
for native speakers to learn. But you don't always get to choose
your audience, and some of your readers or hearers will think
less of you if you break the “rules.” Chalk it up to snobbishness
if you like, but it's a fact. To pick an even more politically
charged example, Black English is a rich and fascinating dialect
with its own sophisticated lexicon and syntax. But using it in
certain social situations just hurts the speaker's chances of
getting what he or she wants. That's another brute fact —
one with the worst of historical reasons, but a fact still, and
wishing it away won't change it.

That doesn't mean the old-fashioned prescriptivists should
always be followed slavishly: it means you have to exercise
judgment in deciding which rules to apply when. Here's
the principle that guides what I write and say whenever
traditional (“correct”) usage differs from colloquial
(“incorrect”) usage.

Does the traditional usage, hallowed by prescriptive grammars
and style guides, improve the clarity or precision of the sentence? If so, use the
traditional usage.

Does the colloquial usage add clarity or precision to the
more traditional version? — if so, use the colloquial one,
rules be damned.

Sometimes the traditional usage, the one you've been taught
is “right,” is downright clumsy or unidiomatic. The classic example is “It's
I,” which, though “right” — traditionalists will tell you
it is in the nominative case,
and that a copulative verb requires the same case in the subject
and the predicate — is too stilted for all but the most
formal situations. “It's me” sounds a thousand times more
natural. If you like being the sort of person who says “It's I,”
that's fine, but know that most of your audience, including most
of the educated part of your audience, will find it out of place.

If neither one is inherently better, for reasons of
logic, clarity, or whatever, is the traditional form intrusive?
If it's not going to draw attention to itself, I prefer to stick
with the “correct” usage, even if the reasons for its being
“correct” are dubious. For instance, the word only can go many places in a
sentence. Putting it in a position the traditionalists call
“wrong” will probably distract a few readers; putting it in a
position the traditionalists call “right” won't bother anyone,
even those who are less hung up about word placement. In this
case, unlike the “It's I” case, following the “rule” will keep
the traditionalists happy without irritating the rest of the
world.

For me it's a simple calculation: which usage, the traditional
or the colloquial, is going to be more effective? Since
most traditional usages work in most colloquial
settings, and since many colloquial usages don't work in
formal settings, I usually opt for
the traditional usage.

Some determined iconoclasts consider it pandering to follow
any traditional rule they don't like, and do everything they can
to flout the old grammar books. I suppose some think wanton
infinitive-splitting shows the world what free spirits they are,
and some think giving in to “White English” is unmitigated
Uncle-Tomism.

Maybe. If rebellion makes you happy, go nuts; I won't stop
you. But as I make clear throughout this guide, writing is for me
a matter of having an impact on an audience, and my experience,
if it's worth anything, is that some usages help you and some
hurt you. Think about each one, not in terms of what you're
“allowed” to say, but in terms of what your words can do for you.
A dogmatic prejudice against the rules is no better than a
dogmatic prejudice in their favor.

Presently traditionally means “very soon” or
“immediately”: “She'll arrive presently”; “I'll get to it
presently.” Avoid using it to mean “now,” not least because we've
already got a perfectly good word that means “now” — viz.,
now — that's one syllable instead of three.
Besides, the present tense is usually
all you need.

Overused.
Earlier may be more to the point, and previous
is often redundant, as in “Our previous discussion.”
Unless you mean to distinguish that discussion from another one
(such as “the discussion before the one I just mentioned”), leave
out previous, since you're not likely to mention
discussions you haven't had yet.

Principal can be either an adjective or a noun; principle is strictly a
noun.

Principal, adjective: chief, main, leading, most
important.

Principal, noun: the most important person or group of
people (“After much debate, the two principals reached an
agreement”); the head of a school (the principal person in
the administration); borrowed money (as distinct from
interest).

A pronoun takes
the place of a noun: it stands for (Latin pro-)
a noun. Pronouns include he, it, her,
me, and so forth. Instead of saying “Bob gave Terry a
memo Bob wrote, and Terry read the memo,” we'd use the nouns
Bob, Terry, and memo only once, and
let pronouns do the rest: “Bob gave Terry a memo he
wrote, and she read it.”

There are a few special sorts of pronouns: possessive pronouns, such as
my, hers, and its, which mean
of something or belonging to something; and
relative pronouns, such as whose and
which, that connect a relative clause to a
sentence: “She read the memo, which mentioned the new
system.” (For a warning on relative pronouns, see Sentence Fragments.) [Revised
14 Sept. 2004.]

Lord
knows this guide irritates enough people already; I don't want to
alienate the rest of the Anglophone world by issuing decrees on
how words should be pronounced. My concern in this guide is with
the written rather than the spoken language. But many things I've
said about writing apply to speech as well. Start with the entry
for Shibboleths, and follow some
of the links from there.

If you have any questions about orthoepy — a
delightfully obscure word that means “proper pronunciation”
— start with a good dictionary. Though it takes a
while to get the hang of it, consider learning IPA (the
International Phonetic Alphabet), which allows greater precision
in rendering pronunciations (it distinguishes the th
sound in thin from the one in they, for
instance, to say nothing of the two sounds that the letters
th make in hothead). And Charles Harrington
Elster has written a few enjoyable books on the subject,
collected into one omnibus volume as The Big Book of
Beastly Mispronunciations: The Complete Opinionated Guide for the
Careful Speaker (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999).
[Entry added 21 Dec. 2004.]

You
should always read over your wrok carefully before handing it to
someone esle, looking for typoos, mispelled words, problems with
agreement, words that missing, and
so on. There's nothing wrong with using a spelling checker, but they routinely
miss so many things that you still have to read your work
closely. (Don't depend on grammar
checkers, which usually make your writing worse, not
better.)

Remember, though, that proofreading is only one part of the revision process. [Entry
revised 14 August 1999]

In America, commas and periods go
inside quotation marks, while semicolons and colons go
outside, regardless of the punctuation in the original
quotation. Question marks and exclamation points depend on
whether the question or exclamation is part of the quotation, or
part of the sentence containing the quotation. Some examples:

See the chapter entitled “The Conclusion, in which Nothing is
Concluded.” (Periods always go inside.)

The spokesman called it “shocking,” and called immediately for
a committee. (Commas always go inside.)

Have you read “Araby”? (The question mark is part of the
outer sentence, not the quoted part, so it goes outside.)

He asked, “How are you?” (The question mark is part of the
quoted material, so it goes inside.)

Note that in American usage, all
quoted material goes in “double quotation marks,” except for
quotations within quotations, which get single quotation marks.

There are a few instances where it's wise to put the
punctuation outside the quotation marks — cases where it's
really important whether the punctuation mark is part of the
quotation or not. A software manual, for instance, might have to
make it very clear whether the period is part of a command or
simply ends the sentence in which the command appears: getting it
wrong means the command won't work. Bibliographers are concerned
with the exact form of the punctuation in a book. In these cases,
it makes sense. Most of the time, though — when lives don't
depend on whether the comma is or isn't part of the quotation
— stick with the general usage outlined above; it's what
publishers expect. [Revised 3 Jan. 2005; revised 12 July
2005.]

The traditional rule, and one especially suited to the monospaced fonts common in typescripts
(as opposed to desktop publishing): put one space after a comma
or semicolon; put two spaces after a (sentence-ending) period,
exclamation point, or question mark. Colons have been known to go
either way. For spaces after quotation marks, base your choice on
the punctuation inside the quotation. Publishers often (but not
always) use standard word spacing between sentences (it's a
matter of house style), and it seems
to be gaining ground among typists today, perhaps through the
influence of desktop publishing. In any case, it's nothing to
fret about.

I get a ridiculous amount of mail about this one point — at
least one (often heated) message a week, more than on all the
other topics in this guide put together. I wish I understood this
strange passion. My only advice to those who want to quarrel
about it is that your time would be better spent worrying about
other things.